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Tyler and Carina had an early morning appointment on Saturday, so I took Tayler with me to run a few errands. Our first stop was at the shoe store, so I could get a pair of shoes repaired. It was 9:30 AM when we arrived, and though the sign on the window said they opened at 9, no one was inside. Three or four doors down from the shoe place is a HobbyLand, chock full of model trains, airplanes, collectible trading card, military simulation and roleplaying games, and a whole lot more. I spent many hours in this store in my youth, browsing through RPG sourcebooks and skimming AD&D adventures. I also purchased a fair number of Estes model rockets, which I loved to build and launch.

HobbyLand didn't open officially until 10 AM, but the employee who unlocked the front door saw Tayler and I peering into the window and invited us inside. I immediately took Tayler back to the model rocket section, and we had an enjoyable couple of minutes perusing the selection. The basic model kits were almost exactly as I remembered them, and they even had Big Bertha, a rocket I remember longing for when I was younger. The rockets that really caught our eyes were the ones with cameras built in -- both film and digital -- though the price turned me off. Tayler was enthusiastic about the idea of launching rockets, and I knew Tyler would have fun with it, so I bought a starter kit with a simple-to-assemble rocket, launchpad and control system.

It took me a couple hours to put everything together and let the glue dry. The kids were both eager to get to the park to see what the launch was like. I mentioned on Twitter that I had purchased the kit, and our friend Matt replied that he would love to watch the launch, so we extended to him and Toddmichael an invitation to join us. After a pleasant walk to the park, I set up the launch platform and spent a few moments reviewing safety information for the kids. I was a little flummoxed that a few kids playing in the park wandered over to watch us, and I was particularly agitated when one them picked up the rocket and began manhandling it: I could just see this kid breaking the rocket before it ever got airborne! Thankfully the kid returned the rocket when I politely asked for it back, and she kept her hands to herself thereafter. She and a few boys both asked if they could launch the rockets with us, but I rebuked them saying that I didn't want to be responsible for them should anything bad happen.

Tyler took the first launch, and she shrieked with joy as the engine ignited and the rocket screamed into the air. The parachute didn't open all the way, so the rocket fell back to earth considerably faster than I thought was safe. I sprinted across the park -- in my flip-flops! -- and managed to catch the parachute in my hand just before the rocket hit the ground. Tayler timidly took the next launch, and she smiled broadly as the rocket launched. Again the parachute failed to spread, but this time I was unable to catch it, so the rocket hit the ground. Thankfully nothing was broken.

It was a lot of fun for me to share this little bit of my own childhood with my kids, and it was tremendously satisfying that they both enjoyed it so much. Toddmichael and I reveled in the nostalgia of it all, since he, too, had enjoyed launching rockets in his youth. We talked about the different models and styles we had launched, or the ones we had always wanted to launch. I agreed to help him launch the legendary Saturn V if he could find one.

The rocket kit came with two engines of moderate power (a low "B" designation), and I bought two more packs of three engines each: one low power ("A" designation) and one moderate power ("B" designation, but higher than the engines included in the kit). We used the engines from the kit first, and then the "A" power engines. When these were used, I put in the first of the "B" engines and let Matt launch the rocket. This engine was substantially more powerful than I expected, and the rocket went a lot higher into the air than it had before. We all gaped as the thing kept going and going! Finally, when we could barely see the rocket in the sky, the nosecone popped and the parachute deployed. Then we all held our breath for a moment, as the realization set in that the rocket was going to be taken by the wind. We watched the rocket spin lazily during its slow decent, and the twins ran off to the far end of the park hoping to track it back to earth. From the launch site, it looked to us like the rocket landed in one of the trees closest to us, but upon investigation we discovered that it had in fact landed much higher up in a tree further back. The rocket was lost.

I had a lot of fun launching that day, so I wasn't terribly upset about the loss of the rocket. I expect I'll buy another rocket or two in the near future, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other rockets do. I don't think this is the kind of thing I'll do every weekend, but it makes for a fun family excursion!

With nothing left to launch, we packed up and prepared to head for home. On a lark, we invited Matt and Toddmichael to join us for an impromptu cookout at our house, which they happily accepted. We spent the rest of the evening eating delicious food, drinking good beer, and enjoying excellent company. It was the perfect close to a fun day.

I started watching the old Voltron cartoon with my kids the other week. We watch an episode or two every couple of days, usually just before bed time. When we started watching the first episode, the kids attention waned pretty quickly, and they busied themselves with other small activities while the show played as background noise. By the third episode, however, they were hooked. It had been a very long time since I had last watched the show, so I had forgotten a great deal, both of the story and of the feel presented in each episode. The story-telling, the characters, the action -- it's all from a different era of cartoons, and to my eyes dramatically different from today's cartoons.

The kids are enjoying the show, though, and particularly like Pidge and the Princess (as well as the Space Mice in the castle). It's entertaining to me to watch the kids watch the show. It's interesting to see how they respond to this kind of story telling, as well as how well the characters and stories stand up so many years later.

I bought for Carina the first season of The Muppet Show, and we started watching it with the kids the other night. I never cease to be amazed at just how sophisticated that show was, and how much of a subtle influence it had on me and my generation. It's a real treat to watch the characters and sketches with adult eyes, while simultaneously sharing in the kids delight and wonder. For example, my kids don't much care for Statler and Waldorf, the old curmudgeons who complain and heckle the muppet performers. As a kid, I hated these two old guys, and never thought they were particularly funny. As an adult, I fully appreciate the irony and sarcasm they bring to the show, and I look forward to their interjections.

The very first episode of The Muppet Show opens with Mahna Mahna, which is a perfect taste of what's to come from the show. Although we don't recognize some of the guest stars from that first season, it's still extremely easy to enjoy the show, and makes for a really great "family evening" that we can all enjoy. I fully expect that we'll purchase season two before too long.

I also have season one of the Transformers, and I'm excited to share that with the kids, though I suspect they'll be less interested in that show -- even after they both enjoyed the Michael Bay movie adaptation. I think Transformers may be too much of a "boy's cartoon" for my girls to really get into it. I'm hopeful that won't be the case, but I won't be very disappointed if it is: after all, I can still watch the show!

Finally, I showed to the kids the first episode of the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. This above all others was my absolute favorite cartoon as a kid, and I watched it religiously every Saturday morning. I wasn't much of a stickler for the rules in my own forays into D&D at that time in my life, so I never really questioned what I now see as flagrant violations of the core rules that were exhibited in the cartoon. During the first episode I exclaimed, mostly to myself, "A first-level barbarian isn't going to take on Tiamat!" This made Carina giggle uncontrollably for a while. Thankfully the kids were oblivious to my outburst. I'm not sure what the kids will take away from the D&D cartoon. Certainly they think Uni is cute, and they've already cottoned onto the fact that Eric is a pompous jerk. I think it's probably too early to tell, yet, what they'll make of the show. As a kid, I reveled in what -- for me at the time -- was creative story telling, interesting locations, and monsters!

Tayler remarked about halfway through the episode "It's so fast!" I realized with a start that she was absolutely correct: the exposition of the episode was extremely fast paced. I don't think I ever picked up on that as a kid: I just wanted to see more spell casting and more monsters. Tayler's observation was mostly just that: an observation and not a strong complaint. As with Transformers, I'm not sure that the kids will be as interested in the D&D cartoon as I was. After all, I owned all of the D&D gaming material I could get, and the cartoon served as inspiration for my own nascent world-building attempts. Maybe -- just maybe -- the cartoon can serve as a bridge to get my kids into exploring role playing games with me...

While looking to clean up my laptop's hard drive yesterday, I saw that I had downloaded a number of full-length features from Miro, but had never watched them. I transferred them to my MythTV computer with the intent of watching them on the television.

This afternoon I watched The Last Man On Earth, the original movie of which I Am Legend is a modern re-telling. The original was interesting, and I wish now that I had watched it prior to seeing the latter, which I didn't particularly like. I tried to get the kids to watch it with me this afternoon, but they only watched it in small snippets, convinced that it would be scary despite my claims that movies made back then didn't employ the "jump out and scare you" tactics of modern "horror" movies. I've seen Vincent Price in a handful of other films, but I'd really like to explore his works in greater depth now: his performance was very commanding in "The Last Man on Earth."

I made Carina watch The Fountain with me awhile back, and she liked it considerably more than I did. I watched it primarily because of Hugh Jackman, with whom I continue to be impressed, but also because the Netflix description of The Fountain suggested it was a slightly different story than that which was actually told. In particular, I kept waiting for "the 26th century astronaut." When the movie was over I explained to Carina why I was so disappointed in an otherwise acceptable movie. She got a hearty laugh at my expense.

To make up for the lack of astronauts in The Fountain, I next watched Mission to Mars. I generally like Brian de Palma films (I especially liked Raising Cain), and this movie did not disappoint. The star-studded cast was extremely enjoyable to watch, and the three acts of the story each worked to produce a cohesive whole. It was vastly superior to Red Planet and Ghosts of Mars in terms of Mars movies. The special features on the DVD provided some extremely interesting insight into the production of the movie, too.

In an effort to share some of myself with my kids, I've been adding some of my favorite childhood movies to their Netflix queue, and watching them with the girls. They both really enjoyed The Black Hole, which was a tremendous delight for me. During the scene where Maximillian approaches Anthony Perkins' character, Tayler said softly to herself "Oh shit!" which made me cover my mouth and bite my tongue so as not to laugh out loud and thus ruin the feeling of the moment for her. While not thrilled with her language choice, I was pleased beyond words that she could get so into the movie. I had forgotten how tense some of the scenes were in that movie, and it really got me thinking about what constitutes "kids movies" today. We recently watched The Spiderwick Chronicles as a family, and I think it's the closest thing I've seen to a good kid-friendly scary movie in a long time. I hope more films like it are made for adolescents.

Tonight I put on Cool Runnings, a movie in which I have always taken something of a guilty pleasure. It's not a particularly good movie, but it is fun and tells a sweet story. I thought that both of the kids would enjoy rooting for the underdogs, and could share in the value of the lesson taught. Unfortunately, we started late in the evening, and since we all stayed up late all weekend long, Tayler simply couldn't keep her eyes open. She went to bed about a third of the way into the movie. Tyler stuck it out with me, though, and she clapped her hands at the end, as the Jamaicans walked their sled across the finish line. I'm confident that Tyler will want to watch it again, and I know Tayler will enjoy it when she watches it.

Earlier this evening, though, I broke out a few DVDs of home movies I made of the twins from 2003 and 2004. It was so much fun to watch! The girls were so little, and their voices so sweet. They were both fond of putting on "shows" for Carina and I, although they never bothered to prepare or even discuss their plans with one another before doing so, so their "shows" usually ended up being impromptu attempts at hogging the camera from one another. The girls laughed out loud as they watched their younger selves dance and wiggle and read from books and lead the camera on a tour of our house. I asked them if I could put a few of these on YouTube for the whole world to enjoy, but I was resolutely denied.

I need to remember to use our video camera to keep recording the kids: it's such a delight to see those little moving snapshots of history.

The twins' birthday is just around the corner, so Carina and I went out to do a spot of gift shopping.

Last Christmas I bought for the girls some cheapo MP3 players I purchased from Woot. These were a good introduction to the world of digital music for the kids: the girls had to ask Carina to load new songs onto them, and it usually worked out to be a somewhat entertaining family moment for the girls to look at the available selection and make requests, and for Carina to make suggestions. It also helped us ensure that the kids were listening to music we felt was appropriate for their age.

Now that the kids have their own laptops, they both requested new MP3 players, so that they can start to manage their playlists on their own. I think both girls have demonstrated to us that they are, indeed, ready for this level of independence, and I think that by and large they will continue to listen to music that we find appropriate (even if we don't necessarily like the music ourselves).

Two challenges exist for me when making a media player selection. First and foremost, I do not want my kids to be locked into the iTunes Music Store (or any other content delivery black box). I recognize that the iPod is perceived as the gold standard of MP3 players, but I want my kids to understand the limitations one agrees to live with when locking oneself into that platform. I don't think I'm ready to explain digital restrictions management to them, but I would like to inculcate in them a healthy respect for the value of choice.

Second, since my kids use Ubuntu GNU/Linux on their laptops, I want a media player that will work without the requirement of installing some fatuous "media management" application. My ideal player provides a simple filesystem into which one can simply drop music files to be played. Identifying a media player than can do this, on a spur-of-the-moment shopping trip is non-trivial. The investigation process was not generally helped by the Best Buy sales rep to whom I turned for assistance.

"Which of these MP3 players can one use without being required to install their silly media management application?" I asked politely. The first clerk looked about lazily before informing me that they all required the vendor's application. A second clerk approached, and I repeated my question. He glanced at the selection and said "Oh, you can use Windows Media Player with these here!" Not exactly what I asked, but closer to the mark.

I really wanted to buy the Samsung U3 player, because it supports Ogg Vorbis audio playback, something that very few retail players do. Unfortunately, the USB interface is on a retractable lever, which looks sure to break. We looked next at the Insignia brand MP3 players, particularly the small 1GB sport models. These probably would have worked for the twins, but the clerks' lack of familiarity about how to load music turned me off.

I decided to purchase the Sansa Clip player, because I had vague memories of other people saying that the Sansa line was an acceptable product. FM tuner and voice recorder capabilities are nice features, and the screens were extremely easy to read. I opened one of them up as soon as I got home in order to charge it via USB cable connected to my laptop. As soon as I plugged it in, Ubuntu's Nautilus file manager opened up a window showing me the contents of the device's filesystem, one folder of which was named "MUSIC". I quickly skimmed the instruction booklet, and to my delight the instructions for loading new music onto it were simply "Use Windows Explorer to drag files into the "MUSIC" folder on the device". This was exactly what i wanted in a player! The kids will have no trouble loading their songs onto these players, and I'm confident that they'll be very pleased with the upgrade from their old MP3 devices.

Now I get to look forward to explaining to my kids how to rip their CDs, and to instill into them an understanding of the current state of copyright law.

I helped Tayler work on her science homework tonight. It was a very eye-opening experience.

The assignment was to read about the rotation of the earth around the sun and to answer a few simple questions. I took it upon myself to try to encourage additional problem-solving skills and asked Tayler to answer a few questions of my own.

"Tayler, if the earth rotates around its axis once every day, and if the moon rotates around the earth once every month, how many times does the earth rotate around the sun every year?" She tried valiantly to make up a number of answers that she thought might fool me. I stuck with it, though, confident that should could figure out the answer based on the information provided to her in the question. I eventually had to explain this last bit to her, and finally after repeating the question several times I saw the light bulb go off in her head. "One!" she exclaimed proudly.

The next portion of her assignment was to describe the solstice and equinox. Both terms were mentioned in the book, but only the equinox was explained as a function of the earth's angle toward the sun. I again challenged her to think beyond the assignment by asking her to explain to me the solstice in relation to the equinox. "Using only the information you know about the equinox, what can you tell me about the solstice?" This was too opaque a question for her to deduce, so I had to rephrase it several times. "If the equinox is caused by the earth having very little angle to the sun, what can you tell me about the cause of the solstice?" We were interrupted by a bout of infectious giggles, which helped a lot to keep Tayler from getting overly frustrated. Eventually, after a lot of repetition, Tayler was finally able to explain that the solstice was when the earth had the most angle to the sun.

I explained to Tayler that I was challenging her on purpose, to help her develop her critical thinking skills. It's important to me that the kids learn how to approach problems with a thoughtful eye, and to evaluate the information available to them as they formulate their answers. It's surprising how much of this I do on my own without thinking about it; and it's extremely challenging to explain it to the kids in a way that makes sense to them.

I need to devise some more kid-friendly scientific processes to help encourage critical thinking in fun, low-stress environments.